The Art of Preserving Love

shorter and left it longer for a one-pint jar. She always made sure to have a jar clean and thoroughly dry and filled with sand ready for the next week’s rose. Sometimes when there wasn’t a spare jar she would look in the pantry for one that was nearly empty and when Edie and Mister Cottingham weren’t around she would quickly tip the syrupy fruit into the compost and wash the jar and dry it ready for her rose. She thought of them as her roses now. Even though he brought them for Edie. When she had carefully placed the bloom in the jar, she cut a strip of brown paper, wrote the date on it and glued the label to the jar. She then carried the jar to the laundry and put it on the shelf. She kept the jars in order, putting the date on them the way you did with anything you were preserving so that you knew how long you had had it. Beth knew that she had one hundred and ninety-nine jars of dried roses filling every inch of the small laundry. Beth had soon used up the three dozen jars the Cottinghams owned and so had to scrounge jars from everyone she knew. ‘Oh, do you have a few spare preserving jars I could borrow?’ she asked the women at church and her sister Dottie and when they looked at her and waited for an explanation she said, ‘Oh, I’m making preserves for the church fete.’

‘Well, you are thinking ahead,’ the churchwomen said, but Dottie had dropped her head to the side, scrunched up her lips and looked hard at Beth and Beth knew Dottie didn’t believe her and was waiting for the truth. But Beth couldn’t tell anyone what the jars were really for. She knew she couldn’t keep borrowing jars, especially from Dottie, and so she used her saved sovereigns to purchase more. They came in a box of a dozen and after the first two boxes Mister Turnbull, with his wife staring over his shoulder, said, ‘What on earth are you preserving, Beth, that you need so many jars?’

And she said, ‘Body parts, Mister Turnbull,’ and looked pointedly at Missus Turnbull so that she stepped back and pretended she was busy making up bags of tea.

Beth preserved as little fruit as she could get away with. She felt that using the jars for fruit was a waste, they had a more important purpose. So she only served preserved fruit when the Cottinghams asked for it, and most of the time they didn’t think about the fact that the fruit always seemed to be stewed now.

Eventually Beth could no longer move in the laundry without the risk of knocking the jars over and she didn’t want to do that — the longer the roses sat preserved in their jars the more sacred they became. So now she did the washing in the kitchen.

Eighteen

The Birthday

Sunday, 5 November 1911, when there is no remedy for what ails Beth.

The summer heat was returning but it was not going to be like the year when Gracie was born. The sun was muted by calm breezes and unable to yell out fiercely.

The days were cool in the mornings and cooler again in the afternoons, which everyone felt was the proper way of things for Ballarat. During the day the warm northerly breezes teased the women’s skirts as they crossed the Doveton Street intersection and made them flounce deliciously. The skirts were getting shorter and rising well above the boot, making the old women scoff at the state of the world and making the miners smile, thinking things might at last be turning in their favour. The afternoons were pleasant and the lake was full and on Saturday and Sunday afternoons the townspeople ambled around it, agreeing that life would always be like it was right now and what more could anyone ask for.

In the early hours of Sunday morning, Beth and Gracie both lay awake in their beds. Beth’s bed had timber slats that had lost their varnish and no longer shone. Gracie’s bed was a brass one that had ceramic balls atop each of its posts with hand-painted pictures on them of ladies on garden swings with bluebirds flying around their heads. Beth and Gracie were each lying perfectly still, though Gracie had her arm around her doll named for her mother Lucy. Gracie thought Lucy was the most beautiful doll she had ever seen, she had eyes that opened and shut and if Gracie used her little finger she could touch the tiny white teeth inside the doll’s smiling mouth. The doll had a white dress trimmed with lace and she had soft brown hair that curled slightly at the ends.

Gracie could hardly move as her body was in a commotion, every part of her tingled with excitement. She felt it down in her toes and she stretched them to see if the tingling disappeared but it didn’t and it coursed all the way up to her head, where her hair was tied in cotton rags to keep its curl. Gracie wanted to savour the tingling and she smiled because today was special but tomorrow wouldn’t be and so the tingling wouldn’t be there tomorrow when she woke up. It was here for today only and she was going to make the most of it and make the feeling last as long as possible. It was here because it was her birthday. She wondered for a moment what her birthday presents would be and if Beth had made her a cake. But mostly she enjoyed knowing that today would be a perfect day because it was her birthday.

As soon as Beth opened her eyes, she knew it was a special day. Her body tingled all over with expectation. She lay with her hands by her sides, under the bedclothes, and felt the trembling begin in her toes and swim this way and that